The Universe is a Great and Beautiful Thing
by attica
Summary: One of the greatest surprises in life is finding out how you’re going to die, and the fact that nobody can ever spoil it for you. COMPLETE. DHr.
1. Part 1

**The Universe is a Great and Beautiful Thing**

**A/N:** Written for the dmhgficexchange at livejournal. OOC-warning! And it is extremely long, so bear with me.

**Part One**

In his dreams, he wakes up to different images and different sounds. On Thursday he wakes up to the image of bees pollinating from flower to flower and hears blurry, jingly Indian music, as if his neighbors had turned their music up so loud that it had crept through the cracks and bled through the crevices – like a leak – into his apartment. The span of time varies for how long he sees them – sometimes they come in quick flashes, like lightning in the country, or a slap a mother gives to a misbehaving boy in public. Other times they play and play, like a haunted tape that never runs out – until it finally does, and he is left in darkness.

On Thursday, he sees the bees in his head and hears the music for what seems like hours, like a television that's stuck on a damn nature show because the remote is broken. He sits there and watches the bees, and he feels so close he can almost count every miniscule hair on their furry little bodies, and sees the inflections of light through their sheer wings. On the flowers, he can see tiny eggs that insects have left behind – some hatched and withered, others budding and green. Subconsciously, he hears his own voice. _Show me a damn sunrise_, he says, because it's been so long since he's seen a sunrise that if he didn't know any better, he would've begun to think that they no longer existed. _That's impossible_, he says to himself, and it's as if he's trying to clasp his hands together, but he can't seem to find them anywhere. The worst part about this (besides the feeling like he is strapped to a TV screen that he doesn't hold the remote to) is that over time, it becomes really fucking easy to lose yourself. To be a stone. To succumb to the numbness that has enveloped your entire body. To slip into unconsciousness and, hopefully, _maybe_, die. And as he's watching the bees collecting their nectar from the natural fruits of nature, buzzing, living, flying, collecting, moving, and basking in the weather of reality, he can't help but think of how badly he wants to see a bee drop dead, right in front of him. Yet also – not. He wants to see its fuzzy small body fall into the golden iris of the flower, dead and still, so he can reach out and pluck off its wings. Just for a keepsake, he'll say, because he never really knows whether he will see the same image more than once.

_Give me a damn sunrise_, he hears himself shouting, as the bee flies over to another flower. He's watching the sky now – or the pieces of it they're allowing him to – and he feels like a riled up fan in a football arena, chanting and desperate. _I want a motherfucking sunrise! Just this once!_ He keeps watching for the colors to change, little by little, for light to break through, but he seems to be suspended in time. Lucky him. He is stuck there, invisible to change, until somebody decides to wake up and turn off the TV.

Then – it happens. Everything turns to black, and he's aware that no pleading or ounce of concentration will make his body stir even the slightest bit. His eyes travel around the room, trying to rouse himself with a little game. _See if you can remember what goes where_. And he tries. The monitor, the TV, the chair, the vase with the withered flowers, the window – he always gets the window. He always knows where. He's spent too much time trying to imagine throwing himself out of it that its exact position is burned into his brain. These days they actually leave the drapes open, to let in some light. He can't tell them that all it does is entertain him of the thought of suicide. He's never been so morbid but it's different now. It's funny how really _different_ it is now. He wonders how it would be to feel the wind in his ears, against his skin. He doesn't remember. He wonders how it would be to hear the crack of his own bones. He doesn't know. He wonders _all the damn day_. If he were to fall out – would he die before he knew he was dead? Would he _hear_ himself die? Or – feel it? And if he died as suddenly as they say people do from the impact of falling – how sudden was sudden? Would he get to feel the sun on his face before he did? He was glad to have heard the phrase, "People don't die from the fall, they die from the impact." Because he doesn't remember the feeling of flying, and he assumes it will feel a bit similar (minus the control), and what he would do to fly again! At least he'll get to feel that. At least.

After a few hours, he hears the click of his door, and he sees a woman come in. She wears white, like all of them do, with her hair neatly tucked back. He thinks it's funny what you miss when you suddenly find yourself having to live without them. He misses the big things – like the sky, and the people, and the sun. But he also misses the little things, like the sound of rain against the pavement, and the moisture rings from cold drinks. He misses seeing the sun in a woman's hair, the way it looks silvery and gold, and he misses seeing Christmas lights everywhere he goes by the time the air gets cold and biting. He misses the smell of dew and grass; he misses the stickiness and noise of parties; he misses the women; he misses the sound of rolling marbles when they're spilled on a wooden floor; he misses the mews of stray cats, and the howls of dogs, on full moons. It's funny, he thinks, that it is only now that he realizes there must be a million different sounds in the world and not once had he stopped to think about them, to really _hear_ them, to really _consider_ them. Now they're just a part of everything else he's missing. These days he finds himself listening closely for these sounds. The flat, soft-soled shoes of the nurses against the floor. The sound of the machine wheels rotating and rolling. The scraping and sliding of metal and the quiet rustle of the window drapes. The clang of the tray. The furious scratching of pen against paper. People's voices, always soft and considerate and nervous, the way their voices always fall to nothing above a whisper when they step in, as if afraid their voices will shatter the windows and cause the building to fall down in a heap of rubble.

"Good morning, Mr. Malfoy," the nurse says to him with a polite smile. She looks tired today. As he watches her, unable to respond, he makes up stories inside his head. She had a birthday yesterday, and all of her friends had thrown her a party. There were twinkling lights and laughter and drinks. Her ex-boyfriend showed up and this made her unhappy for a little while, but so did the man she's been liking – the one her friend had introduced her to at the market. He brought her his favorite CD, a French one, and when he leaves she puts it on and falls asleep to it, thinking about him. But she has work the next morning, and so she popped a few aspirin, cleaned herself up, and went on her way.

"It's a beautiful morning," she tells him. She opens the window drapes, and he watches the sunlight pour into his room, chasing the darkness away. He sees everything much clearer now. He can see the blue, an unexplainable and smooth radiant blue, outside his window. The black outline of a bird in the distance flies by. "Are you feeling all right today?"

She watches his face, as if he will be able to answer her. _I haven't had sex in seven months_, he dryly tells her inside his head, and as if she really hears him, her face breaks out into a smile. "I'll be back, Mr. Malfoy."

He stares at her ass right up until it disappears from his sight.

- - -

He is convinced this is a little bit like dying – except worse. There are some people who are truly fucking desperate to see the impact they've had on people lives so they entertain the thought of faking their death, just to see who would cry their eyes out at their funeral. To hear what sorts of things they would say about them. This – this was his funeral. Except sadder. Because he wasn't _dead_, except he kept _wishing_ he was, though he had no way of possibly hinting that to anyone around him. He thought about death all the time, and every time he kept imagining how it would be. A beatnik party. A sauna with a broken dial. A rodeo with monsters and whores and thieves. Or maybe – and this was his favorite one – a strange little club, almost like AA, where people are doomed to always meet and talk about their feelings and their internal afflictions and even hug. Except, maybe, instead of the neat donuts and treats there would be stale crackers and veggie platters.

Few people actually showed up to see him, one of which was his wife. In any normal instance he would not have been thrilled to see her, but contact from the outside world was now. . . rare. Which, reasonably, only made him realize just what sort of bastards he had chosen to associate himself with. Uncaring, heartless sons of bitches.

"Well, well, well." Her eyes are painted like coal, and she's wearing black – though her neck is weighed down with jewelry and so are her fingers and wrists. He's surprised she can actually still _walk_ as well as she can. "Look at the miserable sight of you." She's frowning – but he's convinced that's how her face has always been. And as he looks at her, the ugly and perverse curl of her mouth, the harshness of her face, and the cold dullness of her eyes, he can't help but want to ask her, _Why did I ever marry you?_ In fact, he can't help but question many of the decisions he's made in his pathetic existence, and they always managed to start with the word 'Why.'

She sits next to his bedside and then lights a cigarette.

_Put that out, you bitch._

"You should see the papers. You're all over them. It's sad, really. Has anyone come to visit you yet? The Minister? Anyone?" Her face is full of pity now. "Jesus, it's no wonder why no one wants to come visit. This is fucking depressing, is what it is."

_Thank you_, he wants to say to her, _for being a fucking ray of sunshine. I want a divorce. I want a divorce, damn it._

That's when a nurse comes in. "Miss?" The nurse sounds alarmed, and inside Draco is egging her on. _Get her the fuck out of here! _"Miss, you can't smoke in here. Please put that out."

- - -

Today he watches a woman cry. She is on a bench, on a street corner, and it is just about to rain. The clouds are heavy and dark with moisture, just nearly bursting, and people bustle past her, their stride quick and hurried, as if she's invisible. He watches her and the brokenness on her face, the way it distorts and twists in all different sorts of ways to convey her agony. Her face – it reminds him of silk, of how easily it is to rumple, and how one single motion will cause a ripple. He can't remember whether he knows her, but it doesn't matter – she's crying, and he finds himself vulnerable to it. For once, he wants to be anything but who he is, but knows that it is too late to change that. He's stuck in a bleak, cruel reality of stillness and solitary confinement and isolation. Things don't matter like they used to. He feels like a monster. Sometimes he can feel his insides, now still and dormant, begin to melt from warmth. Sometimes he feels them harden, like ice. And sometimes – most of the time – he can't feel them at all.

When you're alone, it's hard as hell not to think about who you are. Or _were_. Or _could be_ – all of these damn tenses that relate to your being. He has no regrets but he does. There are days when he tries to pace himself, to tackle one issue at a time; he has plenty of time to think of the rest, and one thing he doesn't want to happen is to run out of things to preoccupy his brain. One day he spends trying to remember all of the Quidditch games he's ever been in. He replays them in his head as detailed as he possibly can. After that, he examines and analyzes them, pointing out the flaws and arguing with himself. Then he replays them again, but this time with the changes. When he's all done with those, he thinks about the other Quidditch games he's seen, and starts thinking up new strategies that he knows he will never be able to tell anyone.

On another day he may think about all of the girls he's fucked. He'll try his best to relive them all, and remember every single detail about every woman. This would be particularly torturous for him. He would think about how each one of them was different, and then how each one of them was the same. He would think about which ones believed in God, or which ones had kept their natural hair color, or which ones still think of him. Then he'd think about Pansy, his wife, and how much he despises her. He'd entertain himself with thinking about how his life could've been if he'd married any other woman, though he always came to the conclusion that he'd be happier if he'd never gotten married at all, no matter what.

Today the nurse leaves the TV on for him – and a drama is on. His eyes are focused on it, the sound coming from someplace above him. He watches it with rapt yet slightly drowsy attention. There's a couple on the screen and they're having a fight.

_"How could you?"_ the woman, an attractive blonde, yells.

"I don't love you anymore," the man tells her. His face is angry. He looks like he's going to hit her. _You_, Draco thinks, as the camera pans in on his face, _are a moron_. "I love someone else."

"Who? Who is it? Is it – that _tramp_?"

After a few more scenes and yelling, he decides he can't watch it anymore. He closes his eyes and tunes out the TV. He thinks of a beach with white sand, and an ocean even bluer than the sky. Then he thinks of trees – and how flecks of light shine through when they're filtered through the leaves. He thinks about the seasons and how he can no longer keep track of them from inside this room, and then he thinks about the people he knows. He thinks it's funny how time could possibly stop still for _you_, as if _you_ are in some sort of time bubble or cocoon, and the entire world moves on without missing a beat, ignorant. People these days can't really afford to give a fuck. He knows this because, hell, he'd been one of them until now, until he was _forced_ to care. He knows that the world doesn't have a single caring nerve in its body.

_I'd be happier_, he can't help but think to himself, _if I was dead_. Dead was better than stuck. Dead was better than silent, immovable, still, and hopelessly dependent. Dead was free, liberated, and right now, living for him was his own personal prison.

- - -

On Saturday he has a visitor. He doesn't know this, of course, until the nurse walks in and there's someone else walking in behind her. It's someone he knows. Thank God. Somebody besides Pansy.

"Draco," Blaise Zabini says, sitting down beside him. He looks him up and down, as if expecting something else. Many people do this. It's either that or they can't look at him at all, and they instead settle for looking at the wall behind him, or his bedside table. He's used to it by now. Once upon a time it actually entertained him. He shouted things at them to try and make them look at him. _Look! A hairy vagina! Look! A golden snitch! Look! I'm growing testicles on my face!_ "They didn't even bother to get you Egyptian cotton." He shrugs, trying to crack a smile. "You look good."

_No, I don't. I look like shit, you miserable piece of shit liar._

He shifts around uncomfortably, his eyes scanning the room. He's silent, and Draco knows what he's thinking. _He wants to get out. Look at the little bastard, he can't get out of here fast enough._ Then he stops himself and takes it back, because even this weirdness is better than being alone. Just as well. Nobody likes hospitals, and he can see clearly he's itching to run out of the door. In the back of his mind, he's counting down the seconds until he leaves. These visits – these visits never take long.

_Well_, thinks Draco, _pal, how's life?_

"I'm doing okay," he suddenly says. "Pansy told me that she visited. It's all over the papers, you know. It's the strangest fucking thing."

_Is it?_

"Yeah, yeah," he says, rubbing his face with his hand, "yeah, it is."

As he sits there, with his clean-shaven face and his crisp clothes, Draco finds that he hates him a little bit. Then he feels the guilt. It's been a long time since he's seen Blaise because they'd had a falling out about a year ago – over a woman. Her name was Isabel and she was exotic with tan skin and dark lovely hair that always smelled like tropical fruit. Her voice was husky and had instantly reminded him of great scotch, and he remembers that each time he heard her say his name he felt a tingling in the bottom of his stomach. It didn't help, of course, that she had been Blaise's fiancé. Blaise was never the forgiving type, and Draco could never blame him – because neither was he.

He doesn't know why he's come to visit him now. He almost wishes he'd never come, because he feels the guilt festering in his throat, and he feels like choking.

"Look, I've been thinking a lot about. . ." He pauses, trying to look at him, but his eyes rest on the white wall behind Draco's head instead. His face is hard with concentration. "For a really long time, when I heard, I thought you deserved it. I thought – finally, there's some fucking justice in the world, and I couldn't even begin to care how late it'd come. For a really long time," he sighed, his voice still tight, "I thought about coming here and laughing at you. So that's why I came. I walked through that door, mentally prepared to kick you down in every way I could. To make it all worse. Because you deserve it.

"Then I saw you. And I knew I couldn't do it."

_Why not?_ Draco wants to yell. _Is it because I look worse than you thought I would? Maybe you can bring Isabel over and show her who she left you for and you can get her to marry you again. You'd keep her forever because she'd feel guilty forever. _Then he feels bitterness. _Well, go ahead! Kick me down! Do it! I'm fucking_ asking _you to!_

"I've gotten back together with Isabel. We're getting married in June."

He feels the lump in his throat still, but now it almost feels as if it has its very own pulse. He wants to swallow it down. It's getting painful.

"Don't worry," Blaise says quietly. "I won't tell her."

_Don't do me any favors._

Then he stands up, because he has nothing to say anymore. "Goodbye, Draco." He walks across to the door, but not before turning on the TV for him. He sees that it's on a drama channel and swears under his breath, before turning it to the news. "There," he says to him, without turning around, staring up at the destruction at some far place in the world. Explosions light up on the screen, followed by a rainfall of ash. "A better window to the world."

- - -

He's been watching for hours. His eyes are heavy and dry – tired from the strain of trying to keep them open and denying rest. They begin to water and he blinks once, twice, before he looks up again at the screen. There's a war somewhere in some distant land and he watches as the newscasters deliver the news, emotionless and blank – trained and cold and empty. Their voices stay on a rigid horizontal line – never falling or rising, but focused and strict. After a while he begins to daydream about the brunette wearing the starchy suit and the pearl earrings. She's wearing brown lipstick and it makes him think of chocolate. He misses chocolate. He misses sugar. He even misses feeling the steam of the iron against his clothes, smoothing out the creases, pressing it to perfection. He misses conversation – even the little ones, the ones you go throughout the day not noticing.

The brunette newscaster – he names her Magdalene. A nice exotic name, one that melts at the tongue to say. He imagines what the rest of her body looks like. Slender with wide hips and dainty shoulders. She has supple breasts with sensitive nipples that stand out even when there is the slightest breeze. He wonders how she looks naked. He imagines she has a faint birthmark, staining her right hipbone. Her favorite color is red, because it makes her feel confident, and it makes her think of strawberries, which remind her of her summers when she was a child. She tells him about going strawberry picking, the way she would feel excitement bubbling at the soles of her feet, carrying her basket, feeling her anticipation rise as it got heavier in weight. She likes the way silver water runs over its ripe blushing color, the way there is a texture that is almost rough against her fingertips as she places it in her mouth. She likes the embedded little yellow seeds and the way she can recognize its unique pattern anywhere. Most of all, she likes the feeling as its juices explode in her mouth – the taste of her full, youthful and innocent summer. Ripe and endless and addicting.

He imagines what it would be like to fuck her. If her voice would break free of its tight binds, the unchanging hard and professional tone, and how she would sound like whispering or moaning his name. He wonders how dirty she is. When she was eighteen, she was caught by her grandmother fucking her twenty-two year old boyfriend in their basement. She told her it was her first time, and her grandmother believed her simply because she wanted nothing more but to let it go – but it wasn't her first time, and it wasn't even close. She had been sixteen and there had been a boy there, tending to the orchards. He was a year older. She remembered being in awe of the way his muscles bunched up in his arms, so strategically and methodically, like prima ballerinas at a ballet – and the tan the sun had kissed him with, and the way his dark hair was swept from sweat and the works of his laboring fingers. She'd caught him looking at her the first night she'd come, and it was the first time she felt it, at the pit of her stomach. Something deep and hidden and carnal.

His door opens then, and he hurries his daydreams to a close. He sees the machine they are rolling in and he knows he will not be able to keep his train of thought. He comes to a conclusion, then, that she is a dirty, passionate lover. Because it would be a crime if she isn't. He looks at her on the screen and sees the routine of her days, the emptiness in her eyes. _The least anyone like that can have,_ he says dryly, _is explosive sex. To keep them sane._

- - -

He wishes someone would read him a book. Apart from watching television and making up stories about strangers he sees, most days he finds it very difficult to fill the hours in his days. Sometimes he runs out of ideas. Sometimes he gets bored. And sometimes – neglectful sons of bitches – they forget to turn the TV on for him, and so he has no choice but to stare at the black, inky screen and try his hardest to project his own fantasies onto it.

When he isn't the cruel man he's become, he finds himself sinking into his adolescence, which can be seen in the imaginary pornos he would mischievously shoot in his head, starring himself and some buxom beauty. Sometimes she is a nurse, a school teacher, or a random stranger he comes by at his bookstore, or even a maid. He tries his hardest to work his imagination so that he can almost watch it from the television screen.

In his imagination, he can do anything. And he has. He has operated heart surgery, given numerous patients lobotomies, and separated Siamese twins. He has written erotic novels, mystery novels, and encyclopedias. He has been a philosopher, an international star, and a mob member. He has swum with dolphins, fed sharks with his own hands, and trained lions to bark. He has made soufflés and chocolate cakes, sawed a woman in half, and rescued innocent civilians from evil. He has discovered the secrets of the world, won the Nobel Peace Prize, and defeated the Dark Lord. He has given Harry Potter many swirlies in the toilet, punched Weasley on the nose, made Granger go bald. He has fucked Isabel (again and again), saved his son, and he has left Pansy. He has walked the line; he has been a human cannonball. He has become an international best-selling author, painted masterpieces, and has become an irresistible icon. He has walked with both Jesus and Judas, discovered the fountain of youth, and mastered rocket science. He has gone to Nirvana, Heaven, Hell, and even the lairs of numerous other Gods and Goddesses. He's even had tea with Napoleon.

It is during his concoction of this list, however, that he finds himself distracted by voices in the hallway and then a sudden figure walking into his room. She's wearing white, just like the rest of them, but she's different. He _knows_ her. And as she turns and looks at him, it is perfectly obvious that she still remembers him, as well. As he watches her flip through his information with another nurse standing beside her, talking about him and his condition, he can't help but groan inside his head. _Oh, fuck me with a fish sideways._

"He's legendary," the nurse is saying, while she is skimming his charts. Her lips are pursed and her eyebrows are drawn downwards in a V. Then she looks up at him, and he realizes she looks exactly the same. A little taller, maybe, and her face has gotten longer, but he is honestly a little shaken by how much she hasn't changed, physically.

_Where are your books?_

"I know this man," she says to the nurse. "We used to go to school together."

"Oh?" The nurse looks at him then, a little apprehensive. Draco finds himself wanting to roll his eyes. _Oh, like you haven't already heard I was an asshole._ The empty visitor sign-in sheet was already a large indicator of that; hot talk around the medical water cooler. There's nothing sadder than a hospital patient without any real friends.

A few minutes later, she sends the nurse away, and Draco feels himself stiffen with wariness. She looks straight at him, unflinching, and he realizes that she is the first one to actually do that, to _look_ at him – her gaze is smooth and cool, not pitying or nervous. He doesn't know how to feel about this. No, he doesn't. _Stop it. Stop looking at me like that._

"It's funny," she says. "I always thought that smirk of yours would be plastered on your face forever."

He hears his own harsh laugh inside his head. _Very funny._

"I think this'll be nice," she says then, after mockingly 'waiting' for his response. "Just swell. When I think about never hearing your voice again, I get goosebumps." She scrunches up her sleeve and shows him. "See? Goosebumps." He sees them, tiny peaks across her pale skin. But he also sees old scars from a war he remembers never seeing, and when she realizes she's exposed to him more than she's intended to she quickly pulls her sleeve back down. "I'll be checking you today."

She rolls out the machines, one at a time. Filters his fluids. As she does these he watches her, wondering whether she's a nurse or a doctor. She isn't wearing the plain nurse's dress, but she's not wearing the white coat either. She has on a name tag and a stethoscope, but she's wearing a white suit. His eyes scan over the suit. No wrinkles or stains. He watches as the fabric bunches up across her chest a little, and finds that he can almost hear her soft breath when she leans over to untangle tubes behind him, her chest just inches from his face. He realizes this is the closest he's been to a woman in months, and can't help but groan desperately inside his head, wanting to hold onto the rough sheets. _Oh, fuck._

"I've read all about you in the paper," she says as she watches the lines and takes down his stats. "Or _papers_, I should say. I'm not impressed. I don't think there's a single soul out there that feels the least bit of pity or sorrow about what's happened to you." She looks up at him. "How does that make you feel?"

_Like little bits of sunshine sprinkled in chicken soup._

"I'd expect you must feel like shit. Then again, I bet it never occurred to you to make friends, not when you're cheating on your wife every night and ruining people's lives in order to make your money, without a care in the world. That's the thing. I've been doing this for a long time. I know which kinds of people are really appreciated by who visits them when they're stuck to a bed that isn't theirs." She puts her pen inside her breast pocket. He watches as she slips it in, and finds himself almost envying the position the pen is in. "Obviously, you aren't one of them."

He thinks of the flowers his secretary sent him last week. He spots them on a table near the window, an eclectic collection gathered by a woman who obviously knows nothing about flowers, and sees that they are quickly withering. There are brown, brittle petals scattered across the desk. There was also a card attached to it that the nurse had read aloud to him when it came. _Get well soon_. What a dumb bitch.

"I can tell you that there are many people who get up every day of their miserable lives to see this – justice. There isn't enough of it. But you – do you know why I transferred over here? You. _Specifically_ you. Go ahead, you can feel special for a minute." She pauses for effect. _Well, would you look at that. She thinks she's cute._ "Because when I heard about what happened to you, it gave me hope. Finally, some God out there has heard something, at least. A little late, but who's complaining? Not anyone I know."

Great. This is exactly what he needs. To be stuck in a hospital bed, unable to do anything – unable to even breathe or piss himself without the help of a damn machine and a tube – and to get his fucking balls busted by his new _doctor_, or whatever the hell she is. He feels his eyes grow hot. He wonders if she can see him glaring at her. He feels his muscles tense in his arms, wanting to grab onto something and squeeze the life out of it – but he knows it's all in his imagination. After all, the papers weren't lying. He'd barely made out the headlines when one of the nurses had left it on a chair in his room, who had then come back a few minutes later when she'd realized what she'd done. They were all the same, plus or minus a few details: Draco Malfoy is twenty-seven years old, and he no longer has any ounce of control over his body.

Once there had also been a crucial debate: Should they just kill him or let him live on a very miserable, pathetic life? Most of the arguments made for keeping his horrible existence in the world had been made by old lady conservatives with cats – ladies that had never met him, but argued for the sake of arguing and making it in the paper.

"Do you believe in God?" she then asks him.

He has spent a good amount of his time going over this topic in the past seven months. Obviously, after he'd discovered his physical being was now useless, he'd had a lot of questions and anger stored up for a certain deity. Or perhaps pinning them all on _one_ God wasn't fair. Perhaps Sheba or Buddha had something to do with it, too – or hell, even that lady with the cooking show with the crying ladies. Which also brought him into another argument: was the fact that he was now hating and cursing God on a daily basis mean that he _did_ believe He existed? So he stopped. Basically because he'd rather not.

_No. No, I don't. Because He, obviously, doesn't believe in me._

He refused to believe in a God that would fuck him over like this.

"I think I do. It's a strange feeling. I only started a few weeks ago." She gets out her pen again, scribbling something in his information. "I think it's happened for many different reasons. One of them is because I've tried attributing justice to nature, to spontaneity, or fate, but it doesn't quite work. The thing is, I don't know who or what to thank for what's happened to you, and it feels rather wrong to go on not thanking anybody."

_Well, fan-fucking-tastic. Now why don't you run off and join the convent? I hear they have lovely meatloaf on Mondays. _

"But – obviously – there are still a few kinks I need to iron out." Her voice is quieter, but still cohesive. He wonders if she's nuts and no longer remembers who she's talking to. "The other day I almost bought a Bible. I found myself in the section and skimmed through it. It's. . . different. Full of stories – have you ever heard of any of them? There's one about a man named Samson and a woman named Delilah. She cut off all of his hair and he died. And there's another about a man who tried to hide from God and got eaten up by a whale."

He doesn't know what the hell she's talking about, and he's starting to think she's crossed off into a different plane – and, honestly, he's a little shocked by this. Shit he knows about men getting eaten up by whales from God's wrath, but he looks at her and remembers who she was and knows that this is very unlike her – the bookish, coldly intelligent kind to get so involved and intrigued in God and religion. The last time he'd seen her – in school – she had been all about cold, hard fact and logic.

_And_, he thinks snarkily, _fondling Harry Potter's dick like everyone else._

"Religion – that's different," she says then, as an afterthought. She stabs a needle into his arm. He watches her do this and knows that, damn, if he was able to feel anything he would've surely felt that. "I don't give a rat's ass for religion."

By the end of her I-hate-you-let's-talk-about-God chat, she's done with all of her recording. She slips his papers back into their envelope, checks his pulse one last time, before leaving. _That's funny_, he thinks, as he watches her walk away. _Not one word. Maybe she's saving them all up for later_. He looks back up at the blank television screen. Without the glare he can barely make out his reflection, hooked up to all of these beeping machines (that oddly do more to keep him living than he himself does) by miles and miles of wires and tubes. He can't see his face. From far away he thinks he still looks the same, but then he remembers that he hasn't seen his own face in months – all he has is a quickly fading picture of himself, like a photograph hung out in the harsh sun, bleaching it of its color until all it is are indistinguishable blurbs and stains. Sooner or later, he knows when he tries to remember how he looks like in his head; he will just see a stain. A very handsome, _irresistible_ stain – but a stain nonetheless.

- - -

Today he sees a glass of milk. There is a marvelous feast in front of him, full of desserts and luxurious delicacies that he can barely remember the tastes of, but all he sees is the glass of milk. Staring at it, his mouth fills with sour bile. It just stands there, unmoving, not too full but just right. He remembers this. A cold glass of milk has always been his guilty pleasure before he'd ever gotten into his father's liquor cabinet and before he'd discovered his penchant for women and before he'd felt the thrilling danger of gambling. And, as if he actually holds the remote this time, he sees himself. He's small and young, about five years old, scrambling over the tall table to grab the glass of milk. He looks at the outfits his mother had forced him to wear – dark velvet with some frills – and groans. _Oh, God_. He remembers his mother had always wanted a girl, and after he was born, after discovering that he was just as _pretty as a girl_, she'd decided to let her inhibitions loose. _You're lucky, mother, that I turned out okay._

His mother had gotten pregnant again when he was around six. He remembers this vividly because one day she'd come by and scooped him up in his arms – something she rarely does for fear of wrinkling his clothes – and had danced with him, like the way he sees her dance with his father sometimes at their business parties. He remembers being confused but soothed by the smooth sashaying, by her grace, by the firm hold she had on him and knowing that sure, she dressed him up to look ridiculous, but he was young, he didn't know to give a fuck just yet – and at least she would never let go.

He remembers the day she miscarried just as vividly as he remembers dancing with her that day – the sudden stillness that had overcome her, like a statue, and the blood. Rivers of it. Pools of it. Staining the Persian handmade rug his father had just gotten imported. He remembers the confusion – again – but it was a different kind of confusion, the kind fused with horror and fear and desperation, the kind that amplified sound yet muted it all at the same time, and the kind that paralyzed him but filled up his throat with a painful scream that came out with no sound. The maids had rushed over to her as fast they could, but what was dead was dead. He didn't get it then, but he gets it now.

He knows he doesn't think about it as much as he should. That's what Pansy had told him, too. He had put some emotional block on it so he busied himself with whatever he could find – women, work, liquor, more women. While she stayed in mourning he fucked everything that moved. He doesn't know if she's right, but right now he's thinking she looks more right than he has ever been in his twenty-seven years of living. He remembers exactly what he had been doing when it had happened: pouring himself another glass of scotch, and playing Bach. He'd turned it up loud, so loud that he looked at the glass to see if it would shatter, so loud he could feel it thudding in his bones and Bach's fingers in his veins, so loud that he couldn't even hear himself think – or the screams of his son, when he fell into the pond. He'd fallen into that pond himself once, but it was different, because his son was a lot smaller, and he couldn't swim. And it was different – because a maid had heard the splash and had come running out to save him. It was an hour later he went out to look for his son, with Bach still playing in his ears. And it was Bach he heard when he found his small body, dead and still and wet, in the pond. And it was Bach he played again to tune out Pansy's wails over the next few months, until he left to live in France with Madeleine, whom he had met at one of his wife's social parties.

It's then that he realizes that the small boy isn't him. He catches a glimpse of the boy's face in the reflection of the glass and sees the similarity – but it isn't him. He's different – because he's a lot smaller, and he doesn't know how to swim. He reaches out his short arm out and manages to move the glass, but it tips over and spills all over the top of his head. And the milk keeps spilling. It keeps spilling and spilling, and it never ends, and before he knows it, he has drowned all over again.

Without knowing it, Pansy's voice fills his head.

"You didn't love him – you never did. You don't even know what love is." Her voice is hoarse and her face looks like a wreck. He's never seen her like this, so uncomposed, so void of vanity. "There you were, drinking your damn scotch and playing Bach – he was _cold_, Draco! His body was nearly frozen when you found him!" Her body starts to tremble, her pale and thin hands grasping at something that is no longer there. "_How could you let this happen?_"

_What do you want me to do?_ he remembers yelling at her. _Bring him back to life? Teach him how to swim before he even knows what the difference is between day and night?_

"I _want_," she screams, "for you to _care_! I want for even just a _single tiny cell_ in your body to _hurt_! To be _sorry! To hate yourself!_" She flies at him then, slapping him, punching him, but all of her strength has left her. It doesn't faze him. Now he wishes it does. Now, as he watches this all over again, his vision blurs. He feels something in his chest, large and obtrusive, like some part of him doesn't belong.

_I can't_, he says, _change anything._

"Tell me you're sorry. Tell me you're hurting. Tell me – tell me you'll never forgive yourself."

He stops himself then. He presses pause on the remote, and then stops it. The image is then replaced with the color blue before it fades into black, and he is left in darkness. He feels moisture somewhere around him; he's prone to sweating in his sleep. Sometimes, when it's cold enough at night, he gives himself a fever so the nurses do their best to change his sheets as fast as they can. He hears himself wheezing, and for the first time in a long time he hears his heart, like booming drumbeats on an exhausting trail to war, to death, to the unknown. He hears Bach, too, but it is canceled out by his heart. It transcends above everything else, even the rapid beeping on the machine. He hears his heart, loud and clear, like he should have when he was running to the pond, looking for his son. And it is this that convinces him that maybe he still does have a heart, and if he's had it all along, it has just finally woken up from a twenty-seven-year-long stupor.

- - -

In the morning he wakes up to see a man dressed in black beside him. He's holding a book, humming to himself, and staring out at the window. _Who the fuck are you? Oh, Christ. He's wearing a dress._

Before he can feign sleep again, the man has caught his eyes open and stops his humming. "Mr. Malfoy! I'm Father Glen, and I've been sent over here to pray for you by the many that care for you."

_Spare me the lies, Father. Just tell me you're here to exorcize me._ He wonders if it'll hurt, or if it'll be kind of like a massage, or a bad case of diarrhea.

"I'd ask you to confess of your sins," says the Father, "but I'll just leave that up to you to do in your mind. God knows what you've done and He is a merciful God. He is waiting to welcome you back into His Kingdom with open arms."

_What a load of bullshit. First I don't get to eat the jello, and then this._

"Are you ready?"

_No. Get out. Nurse! Nurse!_

"Good, then. All I ask of you is to just open your heart to Him, to feel vulnerable, to allow yourself to be embraced and cradled."

_Now, why on earth do all religious fanatics make God sound like a pervert?_

Then he begins to pray. Draco looks desperately around the room. The man puts his hand on his head, and it smells like rusty coins. He wonders if Granger did this – if her new fervor for God had sent her to a holy man to pray for him, but then he corrects himself. _She hates you. The last thing she wants is for you to be saved._ He feels the warmth against the man's hand, the roughness of his calloused palms, and hears him muttering under his breath, his sentences long and ongoing, running into each other. _O Holy Father, please heal this man. . ._

A few minutes later, the man is done. He lifts his hands from him and Draco, who has never been prayed for before nor has ever been the subject for a plead for healing and salvation to God, feels relief. It feels weird, and not a good sort of weird, but as in he's-never-been-touched-by-a-grown-man-this-way-and-never-wants-it-to-happen-again weird.

"Do you feel it?" asks the Father, who means every word. "Do you feel. . . lighter? Do you feel God's love?"

That's when Granger comes in, and he almost feels relieved to see her. "I think that's enough, Father. I've got to run some tests now."

"Oh. Very well, then." He stands up, taking his book with him, nodding at Draco and then nodding at Granger as well, who gives him a very professional smile. She's wearing a light blue shirt today, with beige slacks. Her name tag is on the other side and her stethoscope is still hanging from her neck.

"I'm still a little shaky on the God front," she tells him, before dryly adding: "But I doubt he'd be able to save someone like you. But that's beside the point." She takes her light and shines it into his eye. He knows the cue to follow it. "It's been roughly eight months you've been stuck in this hospital bed, Malfoy. What do you think about? Obviously it would be the only escape from complete and utter boredom."

_I imagine shaving you completely bald, and it fills my fun capacity for the day. Sometimes, when I have extra energy, I throw the shavings on the floor and make snow angels._

"Nobody comes to visit you – you've only had two visitors in the past eight months. They rarely remember to leave the TV on for you, and don't even care to change the channel every few days."

_This is sort of rich, having my shitty life explained to me. Now what does my shit taste like?_

"I'd expect, of course, that you'd want us to pull the plug. But your records here say that you checked the other box – the one saying that you wouldn't want us to pull the plug, if something like this were to happen."

_I was probably half-drunk when I signed that_, he thought bitterly. _That, or in a hurry to get home and fuck._

"I daresay, whether it was from negligence or just a case of an eager hand, you signed your entrance into your own personal hell. The doctors have been discussing when they're going to decide what to do with you. It all depends on whether your wife decides to pull the funds. Of course, with the generous amounts you've donated to this hospital, it could be at least a year before they muster up the nerve to kill you."

_Worst mistake of my life._

She turns off the light, her face peering closely into his. He's never seen her so close up. He can almost count the fading freckles she has on the bridge of her nose – there are only a few. _One, two, three, four, five, six._ There are six. And he can clearly look into her eyes, too. They're brown. A dull brown. But when she turns, and the window is open, it catches the light and it glows, as if there are many levels to it and it looks like glass – it reminds him of scotch, to think of it. Scotch by the fire. She has a tiny white scar on the side of her mouth, and she has a mark on her front tooth where it was chipped. Her ears aren't pierced, her eyelashes are too short, and her pores are medium-sized.

"I think about what it's like to be you, right now."

_And why the hell would you do that? It's as bad as it looks._

"Lying there all day. Not being to move, or make a sound. You see everything and everyone around you and they all just pass you by, don't they?" She pauses, then, looking into his eyes. "I bet you never even saw it coming, did you? That's why you checked that box, and signed your name. That's why you never bothered to make any friends. That's why your wife hates you. Shit happens, and sometimes it's all really as fucked up as it can possibly be, but you never see it happening to you. Which makes it worse. Because you weren't prepared." She checks his pulse. "How long did you imagine yourself living?"

_Forever. Until I drank myself to death._

"And what do you think happens after all of this – after you die?"

_I've thought about this, and I think – I think it's like a crowded party in someone's smelly bathroom. Hundreds of us, crammed in there, with a clogged toilet that's spilling over, and there's no window._

"I used to think that nothing happens after you die. I've looked up all the theories and none of them are exactly what you can call _believable_, but then again, what about the afterlife is? Even the thought of death, of not living, of just disappearing into a place that nobody knows – that's pretty unbelievable, don't you think? For all I know, death could look like Santa Claus coming down my chimney and kidnapping me in his knapsack."

_It's different_, he wants to tell her, angrily. _Your theories don't mean shit. Because you aren't dying. For all you know, you could die tomorrow. But, also – for all you know, you could die when you're eighty. _He hates that, by the way. Sure, he himself could die tomorrow (at this thought he mentally crosses his fingers), but there was certainly no fucking way he was going to die when he was eighty.

"But I know it's probably different." She adjusts the knobs on the machine. "I know everything looks different when you're dying. Thinking about death when you're still alive and healthy – it's different. It'll always be. One of the greatest surprises in life is finding out how you're going to die, and the fact that nobody can ever spoil it for you."


	2. Part 2

**Part 2**

Oddly, no matter how fucked up the things Granger says to him can be, he eventually finds himself eager to see her. Even as he's sitting there, unable to do anything but wait until the images decide to disappear – whether it be of a country stream or a prostitute playing fetch with her dog or an old man tending to his land – sometimes he finds himself distracted. Which has never really happened before. Before, it used to be that these images – whatever the hell they were – were his break from this miserable piece of shit life. He forgets that he's bedridden, and will continue to be bedridden forever, until they decide to pull the plug – and this is a distraction he welcomes. Obviously.

Of course he thinks it's strange that he looks forward to her stepping into his room, considering the constant verbal damnation – he was in denial for a substantial amount of time. But when you're physically retarded and pathetic like he is now, time seems a lot longer than it actually is, and another thing: as short as it is, there isn't really _time_ for denial. After a while, he confronts it and accepts it. He figures he looks forward to her company because one: it's _company_, two: he misses conversation (no matter how one-sided they can possibly be), and three: it distracts him. These days, any bit of distraction is good, no matter what it is. For example: the other day a fly was trapped inside his room, and, seeing the light coming from outside the window, it had spent a good amount of time trying to find its way out. And he'd watched it. It reminded him a little of himself, really. _Sad little fly, stupid as hell. When will you decide you're utterly fucked and just give up?_ But in the end, the fly got exhausted before he did.

It also gives him something else to think about, when they turn off the lights and he is forced to keep to his thoughts while everybody else goes home. Whenever she's there, he watches her closely. Listens to the things she says, how she says them, and tries to figure out exactly _why_ she says them. He thinks she's lonely. She has that vibe after a while – especially with the way she talks to him. She's really quite brash and rude, with complete disregard for niceties and social decorum similar to a man's, but after a while she tends to soften up a bit. She likes the fact that he can't speak, because that would ruin it, but he knows her and she knows him, and it's a lot better than telling these things to a stranger at a bar that might judge her. At least – if he judged her, she would never know.

One day she comes in with a book. It's a holiday weekend and most of the nurses have taken off on vacation with their boyfriends. He imagines the halls are empty, and though there are visitors, they're quiet and polite, like ghosts. He's surprised to see her, but also a little excited, especially when he sees that she's carrying a book. It's worn and faded and he can't quite make out the title, but he doesn't care – it could be a damn children's book for all he cares. It's been so long since he's read a book. He misses it so much that when he sees her book he feels like his mind has turned into a circus seal, barking and clapping its hands together, eager for fulfillment. And he doesn't even have the mind to feel stupid.

_Why are you here? Shouldn't you be vacationing in France with your boyfriend? Oh fuck it, it doesn't matter. I don't care. What book is it?_

"I've brought you a book. It's one of my favorites – a lot of people say it's like a Hallmark card, but I like it just the same. It's The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. Have you heard of it?"

No.

"It's. . . different. Probably different from a lot of the things you've read."

_Good! Different is good. It isn't like I'm going to go out in a few months and read it myself._

She looks at him, as if a little apprehensive, before clearing her throat. She opens to page one and he feels little sparks of excitement inside his veins. If he could smile he would, and he doesn't remember having felt this way in a very long time. Childish, innocent. Here she was, reading him a book he's never heard of before, and he feels like jumping through the roof with joy.

She begins reading to him, quietly but audibly, and he closes his eyes.

- - -

Another day she brings in a stereo. She has with her several albums, and Draco feels that same feeling again, like a child on Christmas morning, and like he has been waiting all night for this, half hysterical and as if they've turned his stomach into a butterfly farm. She smiles a little, as if she can understand any bit of what he's feeling (which he can't emote) or what he's thinking (which he can't say). She keeps the albums a surprise and only tells him when she plays them. First she plays a French album – and he recognizes this. A soulful croon fills the room. This was his mother's favorite album. She would play it all the time. He can't believe he's almost forgotten about this.

"This is Edith Piaf. A French singer. She's amazing," she tells him. And that's all she tells him. The rest of the time she just sits beside him, staring out of the window, sitting completely still. Sometimes she closes her eyes. But not once does she move. Good. Neither does he. She doesn't say a word until the album ends and she gets up to put another in. Another old one, he can tell, but not as old as the last one.

"The Beach Boys," she explains. "When my parents would fight – I would put this on. As loud as I could. It was my mother's. There's something about it, loftiness, a certain. . . escape."

_Isn't that the case with all music?_

She smiles a small smile. "Then again, that might just be the case with all music in general. But this-this album in particular. . . makes me remember how I felt. Every time I hear it, I feel small again. Small and closed in."

As they sit there and listen he stares out the window. There's an indescribable feeling deep inside him, almost like a hollowness fused with something else, and he is crushed by a tidal wave of emotions. Unmistakable sorrow, anger, bitterness, remorse, but also relief and happiness and gratitude. It reminds him of ingredients to certain exotic dishes that when someone reads out loud, it doesn't make sense. Nor does it make sense on paper. But when you finally put it all together, it oddly _does_ come together – even in a strange, uncoordinated and unexpected way. He finds it a little hard to swallow – just as well, there's nothing to swallow anyway, except for the perpetually bad taste in his mouth. But these days – it's always there. His mouth has been sealed shut and there is never any new air, just rotted, old, festering air. The kind of air that has collected all sorts of disgusting, horrible things. The kind of air that doesn't and never will belong to the living.

He sees things in his head as he listens to the music. Some happy, some sad. He sees his father dancing with his mother, in large and graceful swooping steps as they dominate the dance floor. He sees the golden snitch, fluttering helplessly in Potter's hand. He sees silver lightning whipping across a black, tumultuous sky, and the eerie light it flashes through the windows of his dark manor. He sees Pansy holding his son's tiny hand and a bouquet of fresh flowers she'd just picked from the garden in the other. He sees Isabel laid out in front of him, dark and tan and beautiful and as naked as can be – then he sees Isabel in a white dress holding white flowers, getting married to the man she cheated on. He sees Blaise and the white-hot anger and hate that had spread throughout his face, and sees the flash of many colors again when he punched him. He sees his son drowning in a pond of milk. He sees Weasley's dead body crumpled at the feet of the Dark Lord. He sees flowers, all different sorts of flowers, blooming like fireworks in a gray field. He sees a baby being born, wet and bloody and pure. He sees a man hitting his wife. He sees ripples in clear puddles after rain, and glazed cherries on a cake, and miles and miles of strawberry fields. He sees the faint freckles on Granger's face and dewdrops on grass and deliberate markings on the trunks of trees. He even sees his own face, detailed and clear, before it is suddenly taken away – and he is in darkness yet again, waiting and waiting.

_It's too much_, he hears himself say. _It's too much._

His mother's voice fills his head. "When you're dying," she once told him, "you see colors you don't know the names of, and see things that don't matter to you and never have. But they will, just because you'll know this time – you'll know that you can never have them, ever again."

- - -

One day he wakes up, remembering a conversation he'd once had. It's still night and the machines are calm beside him, but one of his tubes is caught on something. He can see it, the tube wrapped around one of the metal bars on his bed. _How on earth did it get there?_

"You," Isabel had once told him, putting her clothes back on, "are a very strange man."

He doesn't ask her what she means. He focuses, instead, on smoothing out an odd wrinkle he's found in his suit. After they had sex, they hardly ever slept. She would go back to Blaise, and he would go to his job.

"Aren't you going to ask me what I mean?"

"No," he tells her. He knows she'll tell him anyway. He knows women like her. Women who try to read men and tell them why they are the way they are. His mother was one of them, always coming up with excuses to justify bad men.

She sighs, looking for her pantyhose around his bed. "You're strange," she says, crouching over, "because you're a stranger even to yourself. It's rare, you know, to be so detached from everything in your world that you don't even remember why you married your wife. Most people have an answer, but you don't. Even if it's a lousy one, they have it. But you don't. You don't even have a lousy one. You have nothing."

"I don't have time for self-help seminars," he tells her, a little annoyed.

"You do so little in your days that I find it so hard to believe your days are as full as you say they are," she says softly.

"I own a business. There's work to do every moment of every day. Especially when it's international. Especially when you've got lazy fucks like your fiancée sitting around in an office with a view smoking cigars and listening to records all day long."

"Like I said," she only repeats, putting on her heels and straightening herself out in the mirror. "It's hard to believe your days are as full as you say they are."

- - -

A few weeks later, Granger comes into his room and announces to him that his wife has left him. She does this while she is doing his mandatory check-up and making sure his machines are tuned up and have enough power, and after she does so, she pauses, not quite looking at him. "I don't know how I feel about women who leave their paralyzed asshole husbands."

_You can say I deserve it._

"But I can say you deserve it." She gets back to work, unfazed. "Just curious – did you ever love her?"

_I don't know. We've been together for so long I can't remember. I – I just don't know._

"I heard about your son. It was hot gossip for a while years ago, when it happened. It was. . . unexpected, to say the least. Sad."

Then she lapses into an uncharacteristic silence, untangling his tubes and making sure there isn't any clogging from any residue. He waits for her to say something – anything – but he sees that something has changed about her now. Her face is hard, as if she's suddenly put up a shield towards something that could possibly make her the least bit vulnerable. He realizes, then, that she's sad. That talking about his dead son has made her feel sorry for him – probably more so towards his son than him – and she doesn't want to let him know.

"I had a brother once," she finally says, her voice quiet, although entirely too steady for it to be natural. Her eyes stay on her hands, unmoving. "Younger. I was supposed to be watching him one day, but I was too busy reading. I was reading – Crime and Punishment, by Dostoevsky, do you know that book? I remember exactly where I was, too. I remember it was hot, and the laminated cover was sticking to the skin on my legs, but I was too engrossed to think about anything else."

_What happened to him?_

"It was – our neighbor's brother in law, who had just come in for vacation. There's a turn on our street where there's an exceptionally bad glare, especially at noon, when the sun's straight ahead. He didn't see him. He was going fast because he'd been late – and my brother's body. . . it broke into too many pieces. Too many pieces, and they couldn't fix him."

For once, Draco hears silence in his head. A sort of stunned and solemn silence that he rarely hears anymore, because he's grown to be able mock his own tragedy – but he finds that he can't do the same with hers. In a way, he relishes the connection.

Now he knows why she was so sad.

"To this day," says Granger, "I still can't find that book. I never returned it to the library. It just. . . disappeared. I don't remember what I did with it."

It's funny that he sees this side of her now – something that isn't cruel or that can be made fun of – now that there is nothing he can do about it. Not that he knows what he would do, or what he would say. Probably nothing. Then he realizes that she would have never said any of this to him if he hadn't been stuck in a hospital bed, unable to walk or move or speak or even shit himself. They had been in two different worlds – one that he had created himself, this faceless and extravagant yet empty universe, and another that is completely unknown to him. He realizes now that he knows nothing about her. He knows nothing about what she had been doing until she'd stepped into his room; he knows nothing about what she does or what happens to her when she steps out. His entire universe, now, had shrunk down into a miserably bleak and lonely hospital room that rarely sees anyone else, or any happiness, but something had changed when she'd come in. He rarely notices the emptiness of it anymore, or the fact that it has more machines than a sense of humanity, or even the window that used to taunt him of the truth that he is now a prisoner of his own body.

He almost wants to laugh. He can feel it, the tickling motion, like tiny bubbles, filling up his throat. There are millions of microscopic trembles inside his body – not from pain, not even from the _desire_ of pain, but from something he doesn't really recognize. He looks at her and the unruly and careless frizz of her hair, the subtle weight she carries on her shoulders that nobody is likely to notice unless they're _truly_ looking, and the tiny white scar on the corner of her mouth, like leftover frosting she doesn't know is there. And, oddly, all he wants to do – is wipe it off, and keep it with him.

- - -

He can't help it. He's been stuck in a room with no visitors and no women – he can't help it. He begins to think about her differently – much differently. Now when she leaves he finds that he is plagued with thoughts of a different purpose and intention. He finds himself staring avidly at her ass, imagining how it would feel against his hands, and wondering how many hands have grabbed it. He also pays attention now to her lips and the way she says certain words, as if she is rolling marbles on her tongue – and her tongue! The pink, fleshy gift from God himself. It tortures him the way it peeks out at him from time to time, as if taunting him. He wonders endlessly how it would feel against certain parts of his body.

He finds that he can also observe her hair for hours. It looks chaotic but undisturbed and natural, and he discovers he's never really seen that in a woman before. He's never really noticed these things before, really. He can't seem to figure out whether she just doesn't care or she has embraced it fully, but the way her hair is so stubborn and defiant reminds him of her, and of many other things – but mostly her.

Every day he watches her, and at first he thinks it's a bit creepy (in its own damn right), but now it has become a compulsion. Today he watches as the white bone of her teeth clamps down on her bottom lip and swears he almost feels shivers. Her eyebrows slightly knit together when a nurse comes in to bother her, and when she stands up, he can see the way the fabric bunches up at her crotch. Her crotch – he can spend a limitless amount of days just staring at it. He wonders what it looks like. She looks like the type to not care, and that makes it even worse, because it's been so long he's seen a cunt that any cunt will do, especially hers.

Every day he comes up with scenarios. He imagines himself, the way he used to be, and watches as he would take her out somewhere – somewhere with twinkling lights and the ocean and modest food. He's spent enough time listening to her know that he knows what she'll appreciate. He'll talk to her, the way he does now in his head, and she'll tell him all about herself, even the eccentric little details, like how she'd accidentally killed her first hamster and cried for weeks. In fact, he finds that he gets hungry for it now – the little things she'll say that serve as tiny windows into her life, whether it be past or present. One day she'll tell him about how her father proposed to her mother, and why her mother had first told him No. Another day she'll tell him about what her favorite book is, and how she uses her least favorite book as a coaster. And maybe another day she might tell him about her sleepwalking neighbor who had gone missing one night, or about how her cat had died a few years ago from eating a dead mouse that had been killed with poison.

It's a strange feeling, and he's never had it before – actually wanting to hear what someone has to say, and not even so you can come back with some witty retort. Every other weekend she comes in with another album, or a book. One day she brings in a comic strip. Another day she brings in a letter she'd just gotten from Viktor Krum. Every time it's something that fills the pieces of the puzzle he has of her inside his head, and no matter how many times he tries to go back, to time-travel back to the time he actually knew her – something is always different. He remembers more than he thinks he should, especially the bad things. It makes him realize how he's evolved from a little asshole to an even bigger one. But he doesn't like to dwell on this because it tends to put a damper on his daydreams.

Today is Christmas so there is very little staff. He hadn't known today was Christmas until one of the few nurses that had stayed behind, the mousy redhead named Carrie, had popped her head in and greeted him a Happy Christmas. _A Happy what?_ "Happy Christmas, Mr. Malfoy." She then hung two stockings from the window and lugged in a miniature tree, decorated it with a few pieces of tinsel, before bustling off to decorate the other patients' rooms to boost their poor Christmas spirit. It's when she leaves, however, that he notices that there are names on the stockings. _Draco, and. . . Hermione._ The nurse must have figured, since she spent most of her time around here anyway. For some odd reason, it gives him a warm feeling inside, and as much as he hates and/or doesn't give a rat's ass about Christmas, it's starting to look like it might not be so bad.

He's in the middle of one of his daydreams when she comes in – a rather raunchy one, for the sake of Christmas spirit. He had just been right in the act of fucking her, with her legs tossed up beside his ears – before he's forced to abruptly end it. She comes in with a bag and wearing a tight black dress. Her hair is pulled back and she's wearing a gold necklace. She looks pretty – or maybe that isn't the word. It isn't. He's just shocked, that's all – before he realizes with a trickling disappointment that she looks this stunning because she has somewhere else to go.

"Merry Christmas, Malfoy," she says to him. "I can't stay very long, I have a function – no, not a function, a party. I have a Christmas party. Usually I can't stand them, but I figured to give it a try this year, maybe something's changed."

_You're wrong. It'll be horrible. People will get drunk and end up kissing people who aren't their spouse. You'll only be grossly disappointed. I've been to those – every single fucking year. They never change, Granger. It's always the same people, getting drunk, and then going home to have meaningless sex with someone they won't even remember the name of in the morning. It's a great injustice to the baby Jesus if you think of it – and weren't you the one parading around talking about your newfound belief in God?_

"I've brought you something. Something to watch. I have a friend who knows all of these complicated things to do with movies, so I had him do me a favor and put these three movies back to back. I don't think you've seen them, so I'll just let them be a surprise."

She walks over to the TV and changes it from the live broadcast of the Christmas Day parade. He sees a blue screen before a blur of words come up, but he's not paying attention to those anymore because she's taken her bag and she's leaving.

_Don't go! Stay! Stay, dammit!_

"It's okay if you hate them." She smiles, and he knows she really means it. Sometimes he really hates how she doesn't have a clue what he's thinking, and how he can't do any-damn-thing about it. "But it's something better to do on Christmas day."

- - -

The screen has gone blue. It's a vivid blue that's all too bright – it almost blinds him from where he's at – and it casts an eerie glow on the room around him. Everything's dark now, and quiet, and still. He looks out at the window and he can't tell if it's snowing. It probably is. He misses snow. He used to hate it – he hated the cold – but now he misses it, only because it's been so long and he's sure he'll never be able to feel it again. He even misses the carolers, with their voices in unison holding up the night, cheery and joyful. He misses the lights, and the mistletoe they hang from windows and doorways, and even that damn Christmas music. He misses the ribbons, the satin, and the white streets. But he doesn't know if he misses the parties, the kind that have nothing to do with Christmas, and really have nothing to do with much of anything at all.

He takes to imagining himself with her, at the party. He imagines himself happy – which is something he's never done – because he thinks he would be, in all honesty. As he thinks about her surrounded by men in suave suits and bitter, burning drinks in their hands, brushing their palms against her shoulder and whispering things in her ear, he feels fresh knots of anger begin to bundle in his stomach. He feels helpless and frustrated and jealous of anyone privileged strapped with free will. He urges his body to get up – _just get up_ – and to start walking, to start moving, to start _anything_. But nothing happens. He tries and he tries, but nothing happens.

Then he feels foolish. Like a fucking idiot. Something burns in his chest and he tightly shuts his eyes. _You want her. But you can't have her._ He doesn't ever remember being in this predicament, or ever having such a dire and desperate need. He blames himself. He blames his mother, and his father. He blames Pansy. He blames Isabel. He blames everyone he knows – he even blames his damn secretary. But he blames Granger, most of all. How was he supposed to know? How was he supposed to know that when he finally wants something – as it is, for everything it is, for eternity and forever and even something else beyond it – it was going to hurt this badly? That he would be helpless and even voiceless and motionless?

_I refuse to believe in a God that would fuck me over like this._

- - -

He doesn't know what to call it. He has never felt this way before, and so he doesn't know what to call it. All he can have as reference is the sad little nurse that comes by every now and then, humming happy songs to herself, with pink cheeks. Every so often he would hear her talk to another nurse as they're unclogging his machines. _I've never felt this way before,_ she once said. _Almost like the world is brighter and everything seems so. . . simple._ Sometimes he thinks about that nurse, and wants to grab her arm and ask her, "How does it end? Does it ever go away? Do you feel like this forever?" He tries to think of whatever answer she might possibly have, but he just doesn't know. He's never felt this way before, and so he just doesn't know.

One day Granger asks him what he thinks his life's purpose is.

_Well, how in the hell am I supposed to know?_

"I don't exactly know how the hell you're supposed to know that kind of thing," she says, "but I hear people talking about it all the time. I'm just as likely to say that we don't have a purpose in life – but I think that's a little depressing." _Well, it's not like you work in a hospital and talk to a paralyzed asshole who can't talk back._ "But if you were to guess, what do you think it'd be? Or at least – what would you want it to be?"

_I don't know. I've never thought about it. I don't think I even fully understand what the hell it is._

"I've been thinking about this," she says. "And I think. . . I don't know, but I think we all have this general purpose to do the best we can with what we're given, and what we're good at. But every time I say it out loud it just comes out sounding like a bunch of shit."

_A lot of things come out sounding like a bunch of shit, Granger._

"But maybe it's just one of those things you only really get a chance to know when you're – well, fucked. When you're fucked. Maybe it's too early in the game to tell, you know? Maybe I shouldn't think about it until I'm dying. Maybe I'll have a real answer then."

He wants to tell her that he doesn't want to think of her dying.

"I think it'll be different, because then things won't be as hectic – I'll be at peace, maybe. Hopefully. And I'll be older and wiser. I could look back and know exactly what I did." She looks at him. "Do you ever do that? I think you'd be crazy not to, lying there all day. You could retrace your steps and relive your life and try to distinguish the bad choices from the good ones – and in the end, you come to find out that it doesn't really matter. Because you end up where you end up, and it's hard to imagine anything else."

- - -

One morning a parade of his nurses and doctors walk into his room, with smiles and grins on their faces. _What the hell is all this about_? Then he sees the cake they are holding in their hands, one with multicolored candles and blue frosting. One nurse is carrying balloons. They begin to sing to him, mostly in tune but there are some that sing the words too late – and he thinks this is strange. He watches this all from where he is lying, and he thinks this is strange. He doesn't remember being sung to on his birthday since he was seven years old, and while on any other normal day he thinks this might be juvenile and really fucking stupid, he has never seen this many people in his room. And he hopes, direly, that they might do him a big favor and turn the damn TV on.

Somebody else blows out the candles for him, and he sees Granger in the back, smiling a small smile. The nurse ties his balloons to the bars on his bed, and another nurse comes to kiss him on the head. They all spend a few minutes in his room, eating his cake, chatting with each other – and this is okay, he doesn't hate it, because he can hear their conversations and remember what it's like to be able to have them. One pair of doctors are talking about their ski vacation in France last year, and another group is discussing the new prime minister. However, after about twenty minutes, the doctors throw out their trash, wish him happy birthday, and head on to their jobs. The nurses leave one by one, until there is only Granger and two other nurses left, cleaning up.

"So. You're twenty-eight, how do you feel?" she asks him.

_Tired. And hungry._ He's never been a cake person, but he suddenly realizes that he misses it. It's funny what you miss when you're no longer able to have them. You miss even the things you know you should hate.

The nurse at the other side of the room, tying up the trash bag, is humming to herself. She is in a completely different world. Granger glances at her before taking something out of her bag.

"I brought you something." She brings out a small glass box, and inside he sees butterflies. Three of them. There is a small green plant inside, as well as a few tiny flowers. "There are air holes at the top," she says, pointing them out. "I know you might think it's ridiculous, but I figure not having been able to step a foot outside in nine months gets to a person."

_It isn't ridiculous._ He stares at the butterflies – there's a blue one, an orange one, and a small white one. They flutter around the box and it is almost as if it isn't there at all; not once do they bump against the top or crash against the sides. He can see their large iridescent eyes and their furry bodies, as well as the intricate detail in their wings. It occurs to him that he's never really _looked_ at them before. He's seen them, sure – they were all over his garden. But he's never really _seen them._

"The orange one is a Julia butterfly," she explains. "The blue is a Karner Blue, and the white one is a common white butterfly. My aunt likes to tend butterfly farms, so I managed to sneak a few out. I don't expect they'll live too long, so after a few days I'll be coming by to set them free. Nothing deserves to be cooped up like that for so long."

He hears his own voice inside his head, looking at the butterflies inside the glass box. _Except me._

Her voice gets quiet. "Not even you. You – maybe you're all right, you know? Maybe you've learned a thing or two. Of course, I don't know what you're thinking. But I'm thinking this sort of thing – it has to change a person." Her eyes have gotten soft. He's noticed this. She lapses into silence, and he doesn't know what she's thinking – all he knows is: he'd actually _kill_ to know. And it isn't as if he can just ask her and force him to tell her; all he can do, really, is just lie there and wait and hope that she'll say what she's thinking about. But after about a minute, she blinks and gets up. She sets the butterflies on the table by his side. "Happy birthday."

- - -

There are times he thinks about what she hasn't told him – what she's yet to tell him, and what she never will. It's easy to judge a person by what you know about them – what they're willing to tell you – and it's easy to say that he's never judged someone by what he _doesn't_ know. But there are questions he is itching to ask – little ones, big ones, detailed ones, vague ones. He wants to know about Viktor Krum. He wants to know what her parents fought about. He wants to know about her first kiss, how she lost her virginity, and who the lucky bastard was so he knows who to envy. He wants to know what she did after Weasley died. He wants to know where the hell Potter went. He wants to know how she ended up here, and why she _really_ came. He wants to know what she thinks when she sees him. He wants to know if she wishes she could just pull the plug. He wants to know if she thinks she's going to be there when he dies – if she wants to be. He wants to know if she can finally see him as somebody human.

Once upon a time, they had been in different realms. They had been on different sides and dimensions. He spends hours in his days both trying to remember them and trying not to. He counts the times he's called her foul words. Words that he, uncannily, can't imagine saying now – because he's just realized how valuable every word is. Sometimes, he realizes, it is worth saving them up, all of those terrible things, just to be able to say something you mean more. Just one thing you mean more. And the other half of his day he spends trying to uncover what exactly that is.

One day Granger comes in, and there's something different about her. She fumbles with his tubes and checks his machines but there's a furrow in her brow. He studies it.

"Your vitals are going down," she finally tells him. He can tell she tries to say this with the straightest face possible. He imagines raising his hand and smoothing out that furrow with his own finger. "They've been steadily decreasing. . . and sometimes it's common for it to take a sudden plunge after a few days. But other times, it just keeps going down at an even pace."

_So either way, I'm going to die. It's just a matter of how long it takes._

"In a few days. . . we don't know what's going to happen." She takes a pause. "You're dying."

_Well, aren't I in just about a shock!_

Then she asks just about the worst question you can ask someone who's dying: "How do you feel?"

It's funny, now that she mentions it, finding out that you're dying even though you're better off dead than what you are now. All this time, he remembers begging at Death's feet to take him sooner. But now he doesn't know what to feel. His head is a little dizzy, even though he hasn't lifted it in about a year. He feels overwhelmed. Like his head has just been plunged underwater and he doesn't know if he's ever going to come back up for air. For a very long time, he can't look at her. Then the anger seeps in.

_Well, fuck you!_ he yells at her. His inner, invisible self is thrashing inside, wrestling to get out of this useless hunk of flesh he calls his body. _Fuck you! Isn't this what you wanted? Didn't you come here to see me die? Wasn't that what you said to me, the minute you stepped in here? So stop it with that. Stop looking at me like that. Stop looking at me like that, damn it._

Just looking at her makes him feel worse. Nobody has ever looked at him like that before.

"Contrary to belief," she says then, "I didn't come here to see you die. At least. . . not anymore. I just needed something to believe in. _Justice_. I needed _justice_. I needed to see it for myself, to be in its presence, to be able to touch it and hear it and know that it's out there. I needed to know that it was _real_."

_Mission accomplished. Get out. _

"But this," she says quietly, sighing. "I don't know what this is. It's something else now. Something else completely different, and I don't know what it is."

And neither does he.

- - -

By this time, he's forgotten what his own voice sounds like. He hears his thoughts but he can't hear them in his own voice anymore – as if someone's taken over, and he's not allowed to remember these sorts of things anymore.

He's getting worse. He should have known this would happen. It's a common fact of life – you get better, and then you get worse. Sometimes you die. And sometimes, you get to see a sunrise again, and maybe even a sunset. Those are for the lucky ones. He feels a little unsettled by this, by the increasingly loud fuss that he often wakes up to find around his bed, and the concerned faces. But in the sea of worried faces he always sees at least one that is relieved. He immediately knows, then, something about that person, although he's never met them or ever really heard their name: they can't stand to see people suffer. Even bad ones that deserve it.

His brain knows it too. The images become more vivid, as if it is trying to use up whatever it can before time runs out. He relives his memories – some in slow motion, and some in fast. But he also tries to cling onto his daydreams, pretending it would be his future if he ever got to have one. He sees Granger in blue dresses and flowers in her hair. He thinks about his houses, all four of them, and who they're going to be sold to. If they're going to be lived in for a change. If someone was going to wipe off the dust that's been collecting and put in a vase of fresh flowers and take down the vintage draperies. He realizes that in the past he'd made it a point to buy the best view possible yet never actually opened up the curtains to see it. Is that how his entire life has been?

He remembers how Pansy would stand in the middle of their garden, just stand there. The way she would look at all of the things she'd planted and tended to. . . happy, proud, accomplished. And then his son was born. She would take him out there, in broad daylight, and teach him about things he couldn't possibly understand. "The best thing about flowers," she'd once told him, taking a flower petal and brushing it against his small palm and fingers, "is that it's a testament to life. How colorful and different it can be." She'd once heard from a painter that the sole purpose of flowers was to inspire mankind. She'd told him that, too.

_I'm sorry_, he finally says. He sees the crumpled daisy in his son's tiny fist. _I'm sorry I couldn't save him._

Today Granger comes in and apologizes. "I have to set them free," she says, holding the box delicately in her hands. The butterflies have started to slowly die. He knows they weren't made to be cooped up and kept by a patient's side. _Go ahead. Let them go._

- - -

Today he sees a grand piano in an empty, dark room. Everything is dusty and the piano is untouched. But there is a window in the corner with a drape that's blowing from a breeze he can't feel. Then – it changes. Next he's looking at a blue sky with a white balloon floating high, higher, and highest. There's not a cloud in sight and there's nothing weighing it down – not gravity, not nature, not any law of physics. The balloon gets smaller and smaller until he can no longer make it out. Instead he is swallowed by the big sky of blue, an infinite and endless horizon of blue. Next he sees a little girl with curly brown hair and no shoes, dancing in dirty puddles and laughing. The dark water flies up and splashes but it doesn't faze her – as she dances and jumps she is still dry.

When he wakes up he instantly feels the pressure in his chest. It's painful and disturbing and he feels as if his body is being torn apart. His vision is clouded and dark and he immediately knows there's something wrong. There's something wrong, and he can feel it everywhere in his body. He hears a rapid beeping somewhere around him, and he can feel motion – many bodies, not just one. He feels hands fussing over him, the tubes tugging, the frantic clicks of the dials. There are voices above him, warbled and indistinguishable. He tries to yell but it gets bottled up in his throat and it never makes it out; he's forgotten his mouth is sealed up. He tries to move his hands and his legs, but the message gets lost in the bundles of dead nerves and muscles in his body. He's drowning and drifting out at the same time, and everything seems so distant, as if he is already getting lifted – to where, he doesn't know.

He sees colors he doesn't know the names of, and instantly – a flicker of vivid images flash by in a flurry of seconds: spilled milk, Christmas lights, a bright blue screen, Granger's crotch, a church, a field of flowers, fireworks, his mother and father dancing, rivers and rivers of blood, Pansy picking flowers in their garden, the soft round head of his son, the brunette newscaster and her pearl earrings, his old suits, his new suits, the hospital window, the trapped fly, pert pink nipples, furry little bodies of bees going from flower to flower, a crying woman on a bench, the two stockings, Blaise's smooth shaven face, his father's Persian rug. Thousands of images he's both seen and never seen, reeling by. A sunset, Aurora Borealis, a field of giant sunflowers, hot air balloons, a magnificent thunderstorm, a butterfly farm. He knows – he knows – he'll miss them all. And Granger is right. He does not have the time or the energy to think about the good choices or the bad choices – because he's ending up where he's ending up, and he can't imagine anything else. He wishes he can tell her. He opens his eyes, and the world looks soft and forgiving but increasingly distant, and he sees her face, concerned and worried, looking down at him. _I wish I could tell you that you're right. _Even though he knows she already knows it anyway.

He hears music in his head – many different types of music. French music. The Beach Boys. Bach. Jingly Indian music. He sees himself running out the door to find his son. He sees himself jumping into the pond and swimming to grab his small body and scrambling to find a pulse, to find his heartbeat, to feel his breath. He remembers how light his body had felt, even with his clothes soaked through. How he'd looked back into the pond as if trying to find his son – his _real_ son – and as the vigorous ripples stilled he saw only himself – his face, staring back at him, blank with hollow eyes, and found that he couldn't recognize himself the least bit, or who he'd become.

Through his heavy lids he feels something wet on his face. He sees Granger, her muddled hair plastered all over her face, her hands working frantically over him. His body has given up, and she should know this. She should be happy. But instead all he can vaguely make out are the tears glossing over her eyes, her mouth tightly pursed into a determined yet anguished frown. It dimly occurs to him that he has yet to see a sunrise, but as he feels her hands pump against his chest in desperation and his consciousness starting to slip away, he knows that it doesn't matter. It never actually has.

- - -

He doesn't know where they are, but he can't care less. He feels time clawing at his heels and it's bound to find him soon enough. There are many things he hasn't done, and it's this last minute desperation that has him acting this way, as if the world is about to end – and it is, in a sense, for him. His universe has been tipped over – it couldn't hold its own weight any longer – and now everything is falling apart and getting sucked into the dark abyss. His memories are getting pulled out, one by one. He is becoming unraveled. The glass box has been shattered and all of the butterflies are flying out towards somewhere, somewhere he can't see and somewhere he can't even begin to know. He's afraid but there's nothing he can do but do what he knows he needs to.

"You have to listen to me," he says to her then, clutching her face in between his hands. "You have to listen to me, and try really hard, because, dammit, I know how you are and it would be so easy to get this all lost in translation." He swallows hard, and he feels his chest caving in. His limbs are giving way, numb and disconnected, and the ground is going to open up underneath him any time now. And that's when he tells her, at first fumbling over his words, but soon he finds it – the strange run-on of things he has always wanted to say. The things he has been saving up for her, all of them, as rapidly as he can, and he doesn't worry that she won't get it because he sees it all inside her eyes. They're glazed over with clarity.

"Whoever gets to have you, I envy the damn bastard," he says, and he can't remember meaning anything more than he means this in his entire life. "Because he'll never know how damn lucky he is – because he isn't me. He won't _be_ like me, Granger. He won't already be a dying man when he meets you. And – isn't it funny? Isn't it just the damn most hilarious thing you've ever heard in your life? Dying is the best thing that's ever happened to me, because it brought me to you. I'd never say it if I didn't mean it. And I'd never say it unless I knew it would do absolutely no good for you to know. . . you don't _need_ to know it. You don't _have to_ know it. And that's why I'm telling you."

And then he kisses her.

"Your book," he then tells her, out of breath for more reasons than one. A harsh, loud wind is picking up around them and he feels himself quickly . . . fading. "Crime and Punishment, it's under the board under your bathroom sink."

She'd hidden it there after her brother died, and had been so keen to forget it ever happened, so she did.

- - -

Somewhere out there, there is a bee collecting his dues, flying from flower to flower. He has suddenly dropped into the golden iris, a vast space of color swallowing him whole, catching him right where he fell. Dead, still, and silent. And as Draco Malfoy hears the panicked thudding of this heart begin to slow, it is this that finally convinces him that maybe he did still have a heart, and that he's had it all along; it has just finally gone silent after a twenty-eight-year-long stupor.

END.

**Post-A/N:** _The Alchemist_ is a real book. I totally rec it to anybody who wants a good, meaningful read. Other than that -- dare I ask you to review? It should be a compulsion by now, people.


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